Sightings from the deep

admin
, 24 July 2015
Sightings from the deep
bottlenose dolphin / Olle Åkeson

By Olle Åkeson

Living Seas Officer

There’s been a couple of unusual sightings in Sussex recently. A pod of dolphins was seen breaching just of Brighton beach and if you’ve been watching the news you can hardly have missed the headlines announcing an ‘invasion’ of sharks into Sussex.

The dolphins were breaching, jumping out of the water, and unfortunately were a bit too far away to identify to species. Porpoises and dolphins are frequently seen further west in the English Chanel but do occasionally come as far east as Sussex.

The sharks in question were starry smoothhounds and about 50 of them were spotted feeding in Medmerry, Selsey. Growing up to 1.5m, these sharks are usually found further offshore and it is thought they were in Medmerry to feed on crabs in the shallow waters and with crabs and other crustaceans making up over 90% of their diet, you don’t need to worry about going for a swim. Smoothhounds are just one of several species of sharks found in UK waters. They range from the smallest – the small-spotted catsharks up to the second largest fish in the world, basking sharks.

Small-spotted catsharks grow up to 75cm in length and inhabit coastal waters all around the UK. They were previously known as dogfish, but to avoid confusions with another species also called dogfish they were renamed catsharks.

On the other end of the spectrum basking sharks grow up to 10m long. It is the second biggest fish in the world, only whale sharks grow to a slightly longer 12 meters. Basking sharks are filter feeders and on a calm sunny day can be seen leisurely swimming near the surface feeding on plankton. It’s this feeding behaviour that gives them their name and also causes the occasional scare: their fins break the surface and when there are reports of great white sharks in the UK they usually turn out to be basking (none have been confirmed to be great whites). Basking sharks have been seen in Sussex, but it’s a rare sight.

It’s great to hear about unusual sightings and even better when they’re accompanied with a video. With increasing protection for our waters hopefully we’ll be seeing more of them.

Pod of dolphins off Brighton Beach

by Jo Bradbury

Smoothhound sharks at Medberry

by Peter Hughes

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